Tourist Trap (Rebecca Schwartz #3) (A Rebecca Schwartz Mystery) (The Rebecca Schwartz Series) (18 page)

I hugged her. “I’m so sorry.”

“I’m okay. Come in.”

“Shouldn’t you be in bed?”

“I’m fine now. It happened this morning—I didn’t want to make a big deal about it.”

As we went in, I could smell spaghetti cooking—one of Mickey’s favorite childhood foods, and still her preference over any fancy pasta the food mavens came up with. It made me shake with hunger. “Alan’s cooking,” said Mickey. “It’s how he shows affection.” Without asking me to sit down, she continued walking toward the kitchen, expecting me, apparently, to follow. I did, hoping I didn’t faint before we got there.

Though Mickey’s red face meant she’d been crying, she was now quite composed, if sad and subdued. Kruzick, on the other hand, sobbed as he stirred, big sloppy tears splashing onto his T-shirt. Instantly, I realized Mickey hadn’t meant me to follow; she was simply so distracted she’d forgotten to tell me not to.

Not seeming to notice me at all, Kruzick put his arms around Mickey, held her like a child hanging on to its teddy bear, and said thank God she was all right, he didn’t know what he’d do if he lost her, and more, I suppose, in that vein, but I wouldn’t know because I backed out discreetly.

For a few uncomfortable minutes I waited, but Mickey didn’t join me. Finally I left a note saying I’d been in the neighborhood and had just dropped in to be sure she was all right, but really couldn’t stay, I was awfully sorry.

I stopped for a burger on Geary Boulevard and found I had more than that to chew over. For the first time I was starting to see what Mickey saw in Kruzick, and that was such an unaccustomed sensation I felt giddy. Underneath all that showy schmuckiness, he actually had a human feeling or two. I might be wrong, but I’d gotten the preposterous idea he really loved her. When I thought about it, the evidence had been there all the time—he didn’t cheat on her; he wanted to marry her; in his own weird way, he was even there when she needed him. Which was more, I thought, than could sometimes be said of Rob. With the utmost chagrin, I realized that I was actually jealous of someone who called Alan Kruzick sweetheart. I nearly choked on my burger.

And then, after another couple of bites, I developed a human feeling or two of my own—equally foreign ones. I started to be happy for Mickey; and to develop the slightest little shreds of affection for Kruzick himself. Unbelievable, but there it was. I was ashamed to think it had taken a miscarriage to come to this.

When I got home, there was a call from Mickey. Returning it, I found her still slightly depressed, but philosophical: “I think I wasn’t ready to have a baby. I mean if I wasn’t ready for marriage, what was I thinking?”

“I sort of wondered that myself.”

“But you know what? There’s a good side to all of this.”

“Don’t tell me. It’s brought you and Alan closer together.”

“You think that’s a stupid cliché.”

“Actually,” I said, “I don’t. I’m glad.” I never had more trouble getting two words out, but I meant them.

* * *

Dad and I made a deal: With his advice, I’d prepare Lou’s case, and he’d help me try it. The change of venue was easy—there wasn’t a judge in San Francisco who could be convinced he’d get a fair trial there. The case was put on the calendar in San Jose.

During pretrial skirmishing, I got to know the enemy a little—and she was me. Or so much like me it was eerie. Deputy District Attorney Liz Hughes was trying the case for the people. Liz was about my height—though maybe a little thinner—only a couple of years older, and a fellow graduate of Boalt Hall of Law. She dressed conservatively, but behaved in any way at all that might help her win her case. (Any ethical way, that is—I didn’t know a thing against Liz, so far as her integrity went, and neither did anyone else.) But she’d cajole, bully, lose her temper, possibly even cry to sway judge or jury. Any lawyer might, of course, but Liz put so much energy into her court appearances she was downright colorful. I’m not at all sure that could fairly be said about me, but I will say there was one person who said it, regularly and ruefully—my mother. So in certain ways I identified with Liz.

But I was also a little awed and intimidated by her—much more so than if she’d been a man my age. She had a reputation as a hotshot, and her record supported it—since she’d been in homicide, she’d never failed to get a conviction. That had a depressing effect, but Dad told me a tale that came out of the sixties, when so-called political trials were crowding the calendars.

Members of a certain radical group, who’d allegedly engaged in a shootout with police, came to one of Dad’s celebrated colleagues. “We need a lawyer like Perry Mason,” they said. “You good as Perry?”

“I’m better,” said the distinguished counselor. “His clients were innocent.”

No doubt the defendants in Liz’s other cases had been guilty. But I was only momentarily cheered. No matter how much I believed my client innocent, I knew Liz had the better case.

I ended up hiring an investigator, after all. He went up to Turlock and ascertained that Les’s mom wasn’t lying—Les wasn’t there and nobody’d seen him in what Chris would call a month of pigballs. He combed the Tenderloin for Les and Miranda, drinking in sleazy bars and even offering bribes, for all I knew. And he got nothing. Dad and I asked for continuance after continuance, but finally there was no longer any point to it. After ten months, the case came to trial.

I should explain something. Lou was on trial for two murders only—that of Jack Sanchez, the gay man on the cross, and of Brewster Baskett, the old man who’d died of poisoning at Full Fathom Five. The police had no physical evidence in the cable car case, and none except the explosives manual to connect him with the elevator crash—since there was no note in either incident, they didn’t feel they could sell either one to a jury.

But they had something very good indeed in the Sanchez murder—the gun that had killed him, found in my client’s room. It was probably enough to tie the two fairly circumstantial cases together. And Liz had another ace up her sleeve, one she timed for maximum flustering effect. During the break right after jury selection, a D.A.’s investigator handed me a subpoena ordering me to take the stand against my own client.

If Lou hadn’t been my client, I might have expected to be a witness, but under the circumstances, I couldn’t possibly testify. It was a blatant conflict of interest. Surely no judge would permit it (except one, I worried, emotionally overcome by the horror of a serial killing). We had a judge with a far-flung reputation for being hard on defendants. But I felt confident he would see reason. Right was on my side.

“Requiring me to testify,” I argued, “stands in complete contradiction of the ethical rules promulgated by the State Bar of California. When I became a lawyer, I took an oath to zealously represent my client to the best of my ability, and testifying for the prosecution would be in unthinkable violation of that oath.” I lowered my voice here: “Futhermore, Judge, more important than all that legal gobbledegook, think about it.
How would it look to the jury?
” I put all the passion I had into the last seven words.

Liz was ready, of course. She argued that I hadn’t yet met my client at the time I discovered the body, and that therefore there was no actual conflict of interest; that I was only there to testify to the crime scene, that it would be different if my client had been seen running from that scene, and also that, if I felt the way I did, knowing I might be called, I should never have taken the case in the first place.

“Because the crime is so serious and the city of San Francisco has been so terrorized,” began the judge, and I knew he was going to deny my motion to quash. I didn’t listen. I ignored Liz’s smug expression. I was already engaging in my favorite morale builder for such moments—drowning my sorrows in appellate remedies. Surely, I thought, if there were anything resembling justice in the world, a conviction would be overturned. It felt momentarily better to think that, but it wasn’t currently the point—the point was to
avoid
a conviction.

In her opening statement, Liz said she would prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Lou Zimbardo had killed Sanchez, a drunk and helpless tourist from Gallup, New Mexico, and had wantonly brought deadly quarantined mussels to Full Fathom Five, killing Brewster Baskett and causing ten other innocent people to fall ill. She said she would produce the gun with which Sanchez was killed, and a (now frozen) plastic bag of eastern mussels, which he had stolen when he substituted poisoned ones, arrogantly leaving them in the restaurant’s bathroom.

In my own statement, I said I hoped the jury understood the burden of proof was on the prosecution and if any member of that jury had the slightest doubt that Lou Zimbardo was guilty, he would burn in hell if he voted to convict. (I didn’t say “burn in hell,” but I tried to imply it.) I noted that Lou didn’t have to take the stand to answer the charges against him, and that he didn’t have to put on a defense at all. Indeed, I remarked, if the case against my client proved as ridiculously weak as I suspected it would be, I most probably wouldn’t put on a defense. I said I fervently hoped that each member of the jury understood that failure to put on a defense, far from being an admission of guilt, was a choice open to any defendant and should not be considered in their deliberations. The ball, I said, was entirely in the D.A.’s court.

Don’t imagine that, after saying all that, I didn’t feel like the biggest ass in northern California. Liz objected a couple of times, on grounds that I was arguing, and I didn’t blame her. But having no defense, Dad and I had more or less decided not to present one. We were leaving our options open, waiting for Liz to leave us openings, and hoping for a sign from heaven before making up our minds for good; but for openers we couldn’t do any better than that. I’m not proud of it, and probably wouldn’t even mention it, but it’s a matter of public record and can hardly be hidden.

Almost immediately, Liz lived up to her reputation for being colorful—the first witness she called was none other than counsel for the defense.

“Miss Schwartz, were you at Mount Davidson shortly before dawn on Easter morning?”

“Yes, I was.”

“Will you tell the court what you were doing there?”

“I was with my friend Rob Burns. He was covering the Easter sunrise service for the
Chronicle
.”

“I see. But weren’t you there a little early?”

“We were.”

“May I ask why?”

“Objection, Your Honor.” Dad’s voice sounded tired, as if he had lived long enough to hear hundreds of second-rate lawyers try to get away with irrelevant lines of questioning, and would probably die of boredom if it happened again. His voice fairly begged the judge to spare him such an undignified death, yet somehow simultaneously managed to suggest that he wasn’t begging at all, that his objection was so obvious, so utterly right, that he need hardly bother voicing it. He was wearing a gray suit with more polyester than wool in it, a rumpled blue shirt, and a tie bearing three strategic grease spots. He hadn’t had a haircut in weeks, and his pants were a little too short. Any juror who didn’t love him would have to have a heart of strictly lapidary interest.

“Overruled.”

“Did you tell the police you and your friend were sleeping in the van near the mountain so as not to be late for the service?”

“Objection!”

“Sustained. Strike the question, please.”

But the jury couldn’t strike the question from their minds. Liz had now established me as a loose woman who would sleep on the street with a man to whom she wasn’t married. Bad enough in San Francisco, but this was more conservative San Jose—I began to have doubts about that change of venue.

At Liz’s request, we approached the bench. “Your Honor,” she said, “Miss Schwartz will testify that she heard certain noises which led her and her—friend—to investigate the site at the top of the mountain. In order for the jury to understand the nature and intensity of the noises, I need to establish where the witness was and what she was doing when she heard them.”

“Miss Hughes, I’m going to ask you to abandon this line of questioning.”

The jury murmured among themselves. The judge had saved me from testifying that I was attempting to pee in public when I heard the noises, but now imaginations were free to run rampant—the very proper all-white, middle-class jurors probably thought I’d been copulating in the van with my “friend.”

“Did you in fact hear noises, Miss Schwartz?”

“Yes. A crash, and then a sound like a person saying ‘oof.’ ” Mild laughter in the courtroom. The judge gaveled.

“And did you investigate?”

“Mr. Burns and I did, yes.” Normally I hate the courtroom formality of referring to everyone by last names, but under the circumstances I felt it necessary to restore a little dignity to the Schwartz-Burns camp.

“Will you tell the court, please, what you found at the top of the mountain.”

This was a tricky one. She now had me, counsel for the defense, in the unhappy position of having to describe the gory murder scene. I had to be truthful, yet hold back as much as I could. “I saw a man on the cross, apparently dead.”

“Could you explain what you mean, please, by ‘on the cross.’”

I was starting to sweat. “His wrists had been nailed to the cross.”

“Could you demonstrate the position, please?”

Dad spoke: “Your Honor, I think everyone gets the idea.” Mild laughter—release of tension. Good old Dad.

“No further questions, Your Honor.”

On cross-examination, Dad tried to reestablish my good name in the minds of the jurors by having me tell about climbing the ladder, trying to find out if the man was dead: “What did you plan to do if he wasn’t?”

“I didn’t know. I just thought I ought to do something.”

“And what in fact did you do?”

“I’m afraid I fell off the ladder.” Laughter in the courtroom.

“How did you happen to fall off? Did something startle you?”

“Yes. A woman’s voice said, ‘Hold it right there.’”

“‘Hold it right there.’ Was she a police officer?”